We’re just about one month away from the next Project Ara dev conference, where Google is sure to have plenty to announce about its work towards the first commercially focused, highly modular smartphone hardware platform. We got a little taste earlier this month as imagery of the next-gen Ara prototype board was published, and this week Google’s got some more Ara details to share, as it reveals what sort of processor options are in the works for Ara.
You might remember old talk about Toshiba chips for Ara, but that’s not the phone’s main SoC: instead, Toshiba has crafted the silicon making up the backbone that will allow all of Ara’s modules to work together. For the SoC proper, we’ll be looking at familiar chips, and Google just mentioned two in particular it’s working on reference designs for.
One is a Marvell PXA1928, and while that may be a respectable SoC in its own right, the more exciting option could be NVIDIA’s Tegra K1 – just like you’ll find on the Nexus 9.
We also get a preview of what’s further out, with a Rockchip processor option that integrates some of this Ara bridge circuitry – in effect, an SoC custom designed to work with Project Ara and its modular format. Other upcoming teases include a wireless data transfer system between modules, but we’ll have to wait for 2015 to get full details on all that.
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